KHOTEN. PROCESSIONS OF IMAGES. THE KING’S NEW MONASTERY.
Yu-teen is a pleasant and prosperous kingdom, with a numerous and
flourishing population. The inhabitants all profess our Law, and join
together in its religious music for their enjoyment.[1] The
monks amount to several myriads, most of whom are students of the
mahâyâna.[2] They all receive their food from the common store.[3]
Throughout the country the houses of the people stand apart like
(separate) stars, and each family has a small tope[4] reared in front
of its door. The smallest of these may be twenty cubits high, or
rather more.[5] They make (in the monasteries) rooms for monks from
all quarters,[5] the use of which is given to travelling monks who may
arrive, and who are provided with whatever else they require.
The lord of the country lodged Fâ-hien and the others comfortably,
and supplied their wants, in a monastery[6] called Gomati,[6] of the
mahâyâna school. Attached to it there are three thousand monks, who
are called to their meals by the sound of a bell. When they enter the
refectory, their demeanour is marked by a reverent gravity, and they
take their seats in regular order, all maintaining a perfect silence.
No sound is heard from their alms-bowls and other utensils. When any
of these pure men[7] require food, they are not allowed to call out
(to the attendants) for it, but only make signs with their hands.
Hwuy-king, Tâo-ching, and Hwuy-tah set out in advance towards the
country of Kʽeeh-chʽâ;[8] but Fâ-hien and the others, wishing to see
the procession of images, remained behind for three months. There are
in this country four[9] great monasteries, not counting the smaller
ones. Beginning on the first day of the fourth month, they sweep and
water the streets inside the city, making a grand display in the
lanes and byways. Over the city gate they pitch a large tent, grandly
adorned in all possible ways, in which the king and queen, with their
ladies brilliantly arrayed,[10] take up their residence (for the
time).
The monks of the Gomati monastery, being mahâyâna students, and held
in great reverence by the king, took precedence of all others in the
procession. At a distance of three or four le from the city, they made
a four-wheeled image car, more than thirty cubits high, which looked
like the great hall (of a monastery) moving along. The seven precious
substances[11] were grandly displayed about it, with silken streamers
and canopies hanging all around. The (chief) image[12] stood in the
middle of the car, with two Bodhisattvas[13] in attendance upon it,
while devas[14] were made to follow in waiting, all brilliantly carved
in gold and silver, and hanging in the air. When (the car) was a
hundred paces from the gate, the king put off his crown of state,
changed his dress for a fresh suit, and with bare feet, carrying
in his hands flowers and incense, and with two rows of attending
followers, went out at the gate to meet the image; and, with his head
and face (bowed to the ground), he did homage at its feet, and then
scattered the flowers and burnt the incense. When the image was
entering the gate, the queen and the brilliant ladies with her in
the gallery above scattered far and wide all kinds of flowers, which
floated about and fell promiscuously to the ground. In this way
everything was done to promote the dignity of the occasion. The
carriages of the monasteries were all different, and each one had its
own day for the procession. (The ceremony) began on the first day of
the fourth month, and ended on the fourteenth, after which the king
and queen returned to the palace.
Seven or eight le to the west of the city there is what is called the
King’s New Monastery, the building of which took eighty years, and
extended over three reigns. It may be 250 cubits in height, rich in
elegant carving and inlaid work, covered above with gold and silver,
and finished throughout with a combination of all the precious
substances. Behind the tope there has been built a Hall of Buddha,[15]
of the utmost magnificence and beauty, the beams, pillars, venetianed
doors, and windows being all overlaid with gold-leaf. Besides this,
the apartments for the monks are imposingly and elegantly decorated,
beyond the power of words to express. Of whatever things of highest
value and preciousness the kings in the six countries on the east of
the (Tsʽung) range of mountains[16] are possessed, they contribute the
greater portion (to this monastery), using but a small portion of them
themselves.[17]
NOTES
[1] This fondness for music among the Khoteners is mentioned by Hsüan
and Chʽwang and others.
[2] Mahâyâna; See chap. ii note 4. It is a later form of the Buddhist
doctrine, the second phase of its development corresponding to the
state of a Bodhisattva, who, being able to transport himself and all
mankind to nirvâṇa, may be compared to a huge vehicle. See Davids on
the ‘Key-note of the “Great Vehicle,”’ Hibbert Lectures, p. 254.
[3] Fâ-hien supplies sufficient information of how the common store
or funds of the monasteries were provided, farther on in chapters
xvi and xxxix, as well as in other passages. As the point is
important, I will give here, from Davids’ fifth Hibbert Lecture (p.
178), some of the words of the dying Buddha, taken from ‘The Book
of the Great Decease,’ as illustrating the statement in this
text:—‘So long as the brethren shall persevere in kindness of
action, speech, and thought among the saints, both in public and
private; so long as they shall divide without partiality, and share
in common with the upright and holy, all such things as they
receive in accordance with the just provisions of the order, down
even to the mere contents of a begging bowl; ... so long may the
brethren be expected not to decline, but to prosper.’
[4] The Chinese 塔 (tʽah; in Cantonese, tʽap), as used by Fâ-hien,
is, no doubt, a phonetisation of the Sanskrit stûpa or Pâli thûpa;
and it is well in translating to use for the structures described
by him the name of topes,—made familiar by Cunningham and other
Indian antiquarians. In the thirteenth chapter there is an account
of one built under the superintendence of Buddha himself, ‘as a
model for all topes in future.’ They were usually in the form of
bell-shaped domes, and were solid, surmounted by a long tapering
pinnacle formed with a series of rings, varying in number. But
their form, I suppose, was often varied; just as we have in China
pagodas of different shapes. There are several topes now in the
Indian Institute at Oxford, brought from Buddha Gayâ, but the
largest of them is much smaller than ‘the smallest’ of those of
Khoten. They were intended chiefly to contain the relics of Buddha
and famous masters of his Law; but what relics could there be in
the Tiratna topes of chapter xvi?
[5] The meaning here is much disputed. The author does not mean to
say that the monk’s apartments were made ‘square,’ but that the
monasteries were made with many guest-chambers or spare rooms.
[6] The Sanskrit term for a monastery is used here,—Saṅghârâma,
‘gardens of the assembly,’ originally denoting only ‘the surrounding
park, but afterwards transferred to the whole of the premises’
(E. H., p. 118). Gomati, the name of this monastery, means ‘rich in
cows.’
[7] A denomination for the monks as vimala, ‘undefiled’ or ‘pure.’
Giles makes it ‘the menials that attend on the monks,’ but I have not
met with it in that application.
[8] Kʽeeh-chʽâ has not been clearly identified. Rémusat made it
Cashmere; Klaproth, Iskardu; Beal makes it Kartchou; and Eitel,
Khasʽa, ‘an ancient tribe on the Paropamisus, the Kasioi of Ptolemy.’
I think it was Ladak, or some well-known place in it. Hwuy-tah,
unless that name be an alias, appears here for the first time.
[9] Instead of ‘four,’ the Chinese copies of the text have ‘fourteen;’
but the Corean reading is, probably, more correct.
[10] There may have been, as Giles says, ‘maids of honour;’ but the
character does not say so.
[11] The Sapta-ratna, gold, silver, lapis lazuli, rock crystal,
rubies, diamonds or emeralds, and agate. See Sacred Books of the East
(Davids’ Buddhist Suttas), vol. xi., p. 249.
[12] No doubt that of Śâkyamuni himself.
[13] A Bodhisattva is one whose essence has become intelligence;
a Being who will in some future birth as a man (not necessarily or
usually the next) attain to Buddhahood. The name does not include
those Buddhas who have not yet attained to pari-nirvâṇa. The symbol
of the state is an elephant fording a river. Popularly, its
abbreviated form Pʽû-sâ is used in China for any idol or image; here
the name has its proper signification.
[14] 諸天, ‘all the thien,’ or simply ‘the thien’ taken as plural.
But in Chinese the character called thien (天) denotes heaven, or
Heaven, and is interchanged with Tî and Shang Tî, meaning God. With
the Buddhists it denotes the devas or Brahmânic gods, or all the
inhabitants of the six devalokas. The usage shows the antagonism
between Buddhism and Brahmânism, and still more that between it and
Confucianism.
[15] Giles and Williams call this ‘the oratory of Buddha.’ But
‘oratory’ gives the idea of a small apartment, whereas the name here
leads the mind to think of a large ‘hall.’ I once accompanied the
monks of a large monastery from their refectory to the Hall of
Buddha, which was a lofty and spacious apartment splendidly fitted
up.
[16] The Tsʽung, or ‘Onion’ range, called also the Belurtagh
mountains, including the Karakorum, and forming together the
connecting links between the more northern Tʽeen-shan and the
Kwun-lun mountains on the north of Thibet. It would be difficult to
name the six countries which Fâ-hien had in mind.
[17] This seems to be the meaning here. My first impression of it
was that the author meant to say that the contributions which they
received were spent by the monks mainly on the buildings, and only to
a small extent for themselves; and I still hesitate between that view
and the one in the version.
There occurs here the binomial phrase kung-yang 供養, which is one
of the most common throughout the narrative, and is used not only
of support in the way of substantial contributions given to monks,
monasteries, and Buddhism, but generally of all Buddhistic worship,
if I may use that term in the connexion. Let me here quote two or
three sentences from Davids’ Manual (pp. 168–170):—‘The members of
the order are secured from want. There is no place in the Buddhist
scheme for churches; the offering of flowers before the sacred tree
or image of the Buddha takes the place of worship. Buddhism does not
acknowledge the efficacy of prayers; and in the warm countries where
Buddhists live, the occasional reading of the law, or preaching of the
word, in public, can take place best in the open air, by moonlight,
under a simple roof of trees or palms. There are five principal kinds
of meditation, which in Buddhism takes the place of prayer.’